by Rita Kay

Created on: October 30, 2007

We buried my grandfather in August of 2004. He died the "natural" way. We all call that "old and fragile."- The way we want to see everyone go.

At my grandfather's funeral my nephew, Tim, sat next to my father and put his arm around him. He was nine years old. Looking at the generation gap between my dad and his grandson, I almost failed to relate this. Then it came to me... "Oh, my goodness," I thought. This nine year old boy had just buried his father six months before my dad buried his. He knew what it was like to experience that loss.

Tim's was a different experience entirely. Regardless, he had buried his father before he buried his great-grandfather. Another dent in the circle of life.

February of 2004 was just like any other. The weather was just starting to get warmer, and we were getting ready to celebrate Valentine's Day. On the seventh, my telephone rang. It was my sister, Michelle, and my other sister, Linda. They had me on a two-way call. I thought, "How pleasant to be able to talk to them at the same time."

"Sit down for a minute," one of them told me. "Greg's dead." I don't remember who said what, but I sort of crashed to the floor.

"What?" I asked, as my voice began to tremble. "Did he have a car accident or something?"

"No. Tina shot him."

"Huh? Wh...? Uh.... What? What!" That was all I really had the time to squeeze out of my botched thoughts. Of course, I was panicked and stunned and crying dramatically. Greg was my brother. Well, he used to be my brother. He divorced my sister for another woman. A woman who would take his life shortly after he married her. It would have seemed different had it been a car accident or freak incident at work, but murder?

It was a messed up situation. Greg was conned into leaving my sister for this other woman. She wasn't attractive or even smart or appealing. Perhaps he liked the fact that she was "new" and "different." Or maybe it was because my sister was a very large woman, and Tina wasn't. Michelle was his first and only sexual experience, until Tina came into his life. Tina's own husband had manipulated Greg into cheating on my sister, so that he could have Greg's married sister. It was sick and twisted, but the plan worked.

In a matter of months, there was a divorce and a marriage to this other woman.
Tim hated Tina. We thought it was just because she took Dad from Mom, but other factors came out months after the murder.

On February 7, 2004, Greg and his new extended family were preparing for a birthday party. Tina

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